Party Discipline Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Party discipline is an essential feature of modern democracy and government, and refers to the efforts parties exercise in monitoring their members—keeping them as a cohesive group rather than as disparate individuals. Party discipline reinforces party loyalty among members who may otherwise be capable of independent action and be tempted to act individually. While party discipline may also describe a given party’s disciplinary efforts in extra parliamentary contexts or mere intraparty decision making—basically with regard to administrative sanctions for actions harming the party—it most commonly refers to the mechanisms involved in maintaining party cohesion in a parliamentary context. More precisely, it relates to the way and manner party leaders exercise control over the legislative members of a party in order to guarantee unified voting in parliament by party affiliation.

Invoking And Upholding Party Discipline

There are various methods for parties to invoke party discipline. By way of sanction, these include, for example, the disciplining effect of whips or other officers responsible for keeping party members infor med and requesting them to toe the party line, sometimes under threat of expulsion from the party organization or denial of speaking or question time. Other means to uphold party discipline known to all parliamentary systems include the denial of promotions, the cutting of resources or, ultimately, the withdrawing of support in the preselection of the seat at the next election and expulsion from the party.

In addition, there are also more positive reasons for conforming to party discipline; these stem from either the individual party legislative member’s interest in policy influence; career advancement; and reelection, an interest that the representative sees as intrinsically tied to the party’s need for cohesion (as a necessary condition for electoral success); or a strong belief in norms of intraparty solidarity, loyalty, and teamwork. There are thus two main approaches to explain party discipline: (1) the rational institutional approach highlights the self-interested nature of an individual’s option to conform to the party line arising out of organizational and institutional constraints and incentives, and (2) the behavioral or sociological approach emphasizes norms and roles (e.g., solidarity) as responsible for legislators acting in unison. The former is more closely linked to Westminster parliamentary systems where government is much more dependent on legislative voting and, consequently, party discipline tends to be “strong,” while the latter is better suited to explain party discipline and unity in congressional and presidential systems with a more autonomous executive where party discipline is “weak.” The evolution of disciplined parties in the United Kingdom, for example, is largely the result of what Walter Bagehot labeled the “efficient secret” of the English constitution: to affect legislative action, parliamentarians had to unite themselves to one or other of the major parties with a chance to form the government; their incentive was the cabinet’s control over the legislative agenda of parliament. In contrast, the evolution of parties in the United States is often referred to as a norms-based outlier in a deliberately antipartisan environment, even though authors such as John Aldrich show how party loyalty and discipline developed as a rational response to instability in voting, mass mobilization, and organizational demands.

The Rationale For Party Discipline

Maintaining party cohesion through party discipline is seen, within certain limits, as a necessary condition for a smooth functioning of parliamentary systems. As Shaun Bowler, David Farrell, and Richard Katz argue:

Cohesion and discipline matter in the daily running of parliaments. The maintenance of a cohesive voting bloc inside a legislative body is a crucially important feature of parliamentary life. Without the existence of a readily identifiable bloc of governing politicians, the accountability of the executive to both legislature and voters fall flat. It can be seen, then, as a necessary condition for the existence of responsible party government.

However, tightened or even legally established party control over elected representatives can be dangerous for electoral accountability. It also potentially undermines a key principle of parliamentary democracy and competitiveness: the latent threat to and control of the government by the capability of elected representatives to express dissent. Thus, many see party discipline as distorting the Burkean notion of a parliamentarian’s independence and freedom of conscience.

The lack of party discipline in countries such as India or postcommunist Poland has brought legislatures to the brink of collapse and in some cases triggered the introduction of antidefection laws. In contrast, many see the absolute party discipline required from African National Congress (ANC) members in South Africa as contradicting the principle of electoral accountability and executive oversight.

Free Versus Imperative Mandates

The most fundamental way to conceptualize the debate over whether party discipline is a necessary condition for stable and responsible party government or whether it is a distortion of the elected representative’s free will relates to the question of accountability: To whom is a parliamentarian primarily responsible? To whom does the seat of an elected candidate “belong”? In all parliamentary systems, there is a tension between multiple responsibilities of the sitting member of parliament (MP). The tension splits between responsibility to the voters, to the party, to the MP’s conscience, and the so-called common good.

The basic principle in representative democracy trying to resolve this tension is the decision for or against giving an elected candidate a free mandate or an imperative mandate. In the case of a free mandate, representatives are not bound by any mandate whatsoever, whether originating from the electorate or from the party. They are free to exercise the mandate in the national interest and are bound only by their conscience. In contrast, under an imperative mandate, representatives are bound by the mandate they receive from the electorate and can thus be forced to resign if they do not act in accord with the party that nominated them for election to the legislature.

Party Discipline And The Electoral System

The legitimation for imposing an imperative mandate or granting a free mandate to a legislator ties to the prevailing electoral system. In a list system of proportional representation, parties are elected, rather than individual candidates. Consequently, it is the party that is accountable to the electorate and “owns” the seat and not the individual candidate, who is considered a mere unit on a party list. In contrast, a constituency system puts more weight on the representative’s individual accountability to the electorate or constituency; this justifies to the representative’s right to abandon the party line whenever if deemed in the interest of individual accountability. The electoral formula prevailing in a given system is an additional factor impacting whether campaigning takes place on a personal rather than party reputation.

John Carey and Matthew Shugart rank electoral systems from most party centered to most candidate centered. They link this to the control-party leaders exercise over access to their party’s label (open vs. closed lists); the extent of vote pooling; the type of vote (single partisan, multiple, or single subpartisan vote); and district magnitude. Accordingly, a closed-list system, where votes are pooled across the whole party and voters cast a single vote for one party, enhances personal rather than party-based vote seeking.

Bibliography:

Aldrich, John H. Why Parties? The Origin and Transformation of Party Politics in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Arter, David, ed. “Comparing and Classifying Legislatures.” Journal of Legislative Studies 9, no. 4 (2003).
Bowler, Shaun, David Farrell, and Richard S. Katz, eds. Party Discipline and Parliamentary Government. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999.
Carey, John M., and Matthew Soberg Shugart. “Incentives to Cultivate a Personal Vote: a Rank Ordering of Electoral Formulas.” Electoral Studies 14, no. 4 (1995): 417–439.
Cox, Gary W. The Efficient Secret:The Cabinet and the Development of Political Parties in Victorian England. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Ozbudun, Ergun. Party Cohesion in Western Democracies. London: Sage Publications, 1970.

This example Party Discipline Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.